There's a burst of new Diablo III information available today, as Blizzard brought some folks in to get a look at how their upcoming action/RPG is shaping up. IGN has a preview of the beta, as well as word that the game will require a persistent internet connection. "In both Diablo and especially in Diablo II, I think the intuition for a lot of people when they're playing the game is 'I want to make my character offline away from that scary battle net environment. And then once I have this powerful character, I'll jump online.' But the problem with that concept is we can't really detect if they're cheating. They might have the capability to hack their character, things like that, so at that point we can't really allow that character to be in the battle net environment. Then they're going to have to restart their character, which is exactly what happened in Diablo II, which was really unfortunate," explains Blizzard's Rob Pardo. "Your character will be online on battle net the moment you start playing. You can play a solo experience like you would in Diablo II, it's just your character is on Blizzard's servers and authenticated."

There's a post on DiabloFans.com with a big rundown on their experiences along with a FAQ, photos, video, screenshots, and interviews with the developers, taking extra effort to let you avoid major spoilers. There are many revelations, perhaps the most significant of which being the ability to buy and sell in-game items in the auction house for real money. Here's a bit from the FAQ on how this will work:

Don’t Need It? Put It Up For Auction!
Nearly everything found in the game, including gold, can be exchanged with other players directly or through the auction house system. So say you’re a witch doctor and you’ve just found an incredibly rare, incredibly powerful axe that only barbarians can use. In the previous Diablo games your best option might have been to sell the axe to an in-game vendor, but in Diablo III, you now have the ability to list that axe in the auction house for your fellow barbarian players to bid on. And you know another player will probably appreciate the true value of that axe more than some heartless vendor who’ll likely just melt it down for scrap….

Amazing Search Functionality
The auction house’s "smart search" functionality can automatically sort items in the auction house based on which upgrades would be most beneficial to your character. Also, searching for the best gear for multiple characters on the same Battle.net account can be done all from the same interface without having to log out.

The Choice Is Yours
Use of either the real-money or gold-based auction house is completely optional -- that decision can be made on a per-item basis, and both versions of the auction house are functionally the same. In addition, players have the option to simply sell the items they obtain to in-game vendors for gold. They can also trade items to other players through a direct character-to-character trading system in the game in exchange for gold, other items, or just an overwhelming sense of goodwill.

Players Only
Blizzard does not plan to post items for sale in the auction house. The driving purpose of the auction house is to provide players with a fun additional in-game option for what they do with the items they obtain in the game. Items sold in the auction house will be posted by players and purchased by players.

Safe and Sanctified
The real-money auction house provides players with an easy-to-use, Blizzard-sanctioned way to collect money for items they obtain while playing Diablo III. It also helps protect players from the scams and theft often associated with questionable third-party sites by providing a secure, completely in-game method for purchasing and obtaining the items they want for their characters.

Rattlehead wrote on Aug 2, 2011, 11:14:Funny how people are now wrapping their lips around the Torchlight 2 cock since this announcement. Don't get me wrong, I love Torchlight but the series can't hold a candle to Diablo in terms of story, characters and well pretty much everything in general. Torchlight is pretty much filler until Diablo 3 comes out. It certainly is the best "Diablo Clone" but that it's, it will always be just a diablo clone.

Baiting and vulgarity aside, I think it says a lot about your position in this debate that you already have Diablo 3 down as a great game way before you have ever played it.

Personally all the online DRM stuff not even considered I think the game sounds disappointing. No skill trees, a pretty bland look and the videos show it's pretty slow and simplistic. Remember that this game is not being made by the same developers who did Diablo 2.

Funny how people are now wrapping their lips around the Torchlight 2...

This is a worthwhile post, but is it really necessary to use such a vulgar analogy? Forum topics tend to go off the rails to start with, and this is not going to help (not to mention it's a little stomach-turning).

Please consider raising the level of discourse a trifle. Thanks.

You're writing this to the guy that made multiple posts just to get post 300. I'm just saying.

And posts like #53 in this thread, which only makes his T2 diatribe that much ironic.

Funny how people are now wrapping their lips around the Torchlight 2...

This is a worthwhile post, but is it really necessary to use such a vulgar analogy? Forum topics tend to go off the rails to start with, and this is not going to help (not to mention it's a little stomach-turning).

Please consider raising the level of discourse a trifle. Thanks.

You're writing this to the guy that made multiple posts just to get post 300. I'm just saying.

Funny how people are now wrapping their lips around the Torchlight 2...

This is a worthwhile post, but is it really necessary to use such a vulgar analogy? Forum topics tend to go off the rails to start with, and this is not going to help (not to mention it's a little stomach-turning).

Funny how people are now wrapping their lips around the Torchlight 2 cock since this announcement. Don't get me wrong, I love Torchlight but the series can't hold a candle to Diablo in terms of story, characters and well pretty much everything in general. Torchlight is pretty much filler until Diablo 3 comes out. It certainly is the best "Diablo Clone" but that it's, it will always be just a diablo clone.

Back on topic. What if Runic Games was bought out Ubi, EA, Activision or another company? What if the game was released for the Xbox and PS3 simultaneously? Who would you guys turn to next to praise after shunning T2?

This seems a common cycle for people here at Bluesnews and PC gamers in general. They hail one game/company as the messiah, and when one minor quirk comes out, they shun and outcast it like Casey Anthony. Then they turn to something else as the new messiah, rinse and repeat.

Thanks for the info - surprising that type of site would be successful, but not totally unbelievable.

Mr. Tact wrote on Aug 2, 2011, 00:10:

DNForever wrote on Aug 1, 2011, 23:34:Considering I don't know what ige.com is, no I haven't lately.

It is gold selling service. They sell virtual currency for all the big games. It is a big business. I don't have any details about how much they make, but I'd be shocked if it isn't many thousands every month.

I guarantee you D3 will be added to the list of supported games in short order, assuming the game goes forward as described in this news release.

InBlack wrote on Aug 2, 2011, 09:59:What do you call a game thats still in development that claims its not an MMO and supposedly will have no monthly subscription but a one time 60$ fee and maybe some microtranstractions maybe?

They don't really need to emulate the full functionality to let you play the game. I agree it will be complex but it won't be impossible, see BNetD for examples of previous Blizzard multiplayer frameworks being replicated. Whether anyone wants to do it or not is a different story. I suspect the demand for Diablo 3 is going to be significantly stronger than SC2 so I think it'll happen. People like to point to SC2 sales figures but I doubt the concurrent player figures are that impressive. A common sentiment I see on forums is buyer regret with regards to SC2, I wonder if anyone is even working on building a basic server emulator.

Anyway back to the topic material, I think this was a smart move on Blizzards part. People were doing this kind of thing already with D2JSP, might as well make it legit.

The Ubisoft games aren't really in the same ballpark in terms of complexity. Diablo III is being built around battle.net and an online presence. It's not merely a DRM slap-on. Trying to emulate battle.net is going to take a lot of time and effort, and may well be futile.

I'm not saying it won't happen, but my prediction is that it won't happen in a timely fashion. Again, if it were something reasonably easy to accomplish, they'd have already done it for Starcraft II.

But neither of us actually know what'll happen, so I guess I'll just owe you a beer if it turns out you're right.

Bhruic wrote on Aug 2, 2011, 09:38:It's already celebrated its first birthday, so it may be "young", but it's stood pretty strong so far. The days of all games having emulated servers are over. I can't think offhand of any examples of emulated servers for games within the last couple of years.

Uhhh? I'm referring to the ability to play offline, not total multiplayer. The Ubisoft 'always be connected' titles were emulated, most of them anyway. I don't know what makes you think that pirates will just give up because it becomes difficult, they have shown that they will not do that time and time again. Some of them even go back and crack years old games. The real question is whether an offline crack will materialize in enough time to matter. Either way it probably be a lot less trivial to implement a basic server emulator to enable offline play as opposed to something that allows full multiplayer.

The only real way to prevent server emulation is to do what OnLive does and stream most of the content. They can certainly make it difficult and obfuscate by hosting character data server-side which is what they appear to be doing but I doubt it will be impossible.

It's already celebrated its first birthday, so it may be "young", but it's stood pretty strong so far. The days of all games having emulated servers are over. I can't think offhand of any examples of emulated servers for games within the last couple of years.

Bhruic wrote on Aug 2, 2011, 09:25:Diablo III will also certainly follow the same trend, with the slight difference of there being no offline play mode, so no crack at all. You won't be able to simply grab a crack from the airport wi-fi and then play. No constant connection? No ability to play. Period.

You can believe whatever you want but I think past evidence points to demand driving some form of server emulator for those games. I find it difficult to believe that people can build a server emulator for WoW but that the possibily doesn't exist to simply play offline SP Diablo 3. Starcraft 2 is young yet by the way.